Five side effects of eating purple sweet potatoes
by Shenandoah Risu
Summary: Five curious side effects of eating purple sweet potatoes on a daily basis. Characters: the whole Destiny crew.


**Title: Five curious side effects of eating purple sweet potatoes on a daily basis**  
><strong>Author: Shenandoah Risu<strong>  
><strong>Rating<strong>: Teen  
><strong>Content Flags<strong>: none  
><strong>Spoilers<strong>: SGU Season 1 "Justice" and onwards  
><strong>Characters<strong>: The Destiny Crew  
><strong>Word Count<strong>: 921  
><strong>Summary<strong>: _The reluctance to eating the nasty-tasting tubers diminished considerably._  
><strong>Author's Notes<strong>: Written for prompt set #131 at the LJ Comm **sg1_five_things**  
><strong>Disclaimer<strong>: I don't own SGU. I wouldn't know what to do with it. Now, Young... Young I'd know what to do with. ;-)  
><strong>Thanks for reading! Feedback = Love. ;-)<strong>

**oOo**

**Five curious side effects of eating purple sweet potatoes on a daily basis**

Adam Brody first noticed it when during yet another crisis on the Destiny he didn't get a chance to wash his hair. Despite the lack of attention his dark curls stayed perky and full. He mentioned it in passing to Volker who stared at him openmouthed and muttered something about having thought that was just him. Lisa overheard the conversation and chimed in affirmatively. Dr. Inman was pressed into service to investigate the great hair phenomenon (Spencer and Greer were exempt from providing samples), and when she found minute traces of 6,6′-dibromoindigo, an organobromide compound found in affluence in purple sweet potatoes in everyone's root follicles, the reluctance to eating the nasty-tasting tubers diminished considerably.

Darren Becker always made a point to compliment people on their hair when he had nothing else to serve besides purple sweet potatoes. It would earn him a smile and many happy plates.

**oOo**

Greer was the first one to try the tuber, and he was also the first one to high-tail it to the infirmary a few hours later. With all the mess surrounding Spencer's death he had held off on his panic attack but when his pee continued to exhibit the same bright magenta color he finally mooched his way down there and whispered into TJ's ear. TJ asked for a sample to test for blood (which thankfully came back negative), when Dr. Inman stopped by. She had experienced the same problem and, as any good chemist would do, had immediately started analyzing her own wee.

"Alarms off," she calmed Greer down. "It's the purple sweet potato. Actually, red beets can have a similar effect. Eaten in large quantities and combined with certain inherent body chemistries the organic compounds found in the…" Greer's eyes glazed over at that point. "It's completely harmless," Inman summed up her lecture.

Dr. Morrison was the only one whose pee stayed the usual color, because he had severe digestive problems from ingesting the tubers, so he never ate them.

**oOo**

As an involuntary former smoker Nicholas Rush had been quite used to his diminished sense of smell. It was quite an eye-opening (or rather, a sinus-opening) experience for him to start noticing different smells around him on the Destiny, as his body de-toxed over time. Since the initial water rationing forced them all to do only the tiniest bit of wash-up every day, he was soon able to identify people by smell alone. When he returned from his captivity aboard the Nakai ship the first thing he noticed was that everybody smelled exactly the same – a vague vanilla aroma. He contributed it to whatever the aliens had done to him, finally confiding in Chloe. But Chloe just took his hand and smiled. "For once, you can't blame the Blue Guys," she said. "It's the purple sweet potatoes. They contain natural zeolites which absorb odors. And they have lots of vanillin, so yeah, we all smell very vanilla now because that's all we've been eating. Could be worse. At least we don't smell the way those things taste."

Nicholas Rush admitted that Chloe was right on both accounts. Still, her vanilla quite possibly smelled a little better than everyone else's.

**oOo**

"We're out of condoms," TJ reported to Colonel Young shortly after confessing her pregnancy to him. He nodded gravely and then looked up at her with a quizzical expression. "And that's a problem for us – how?"

TJ blushed and smiled. "Not for the two of us, really – but everyone else. People are mating like bunnies on this ship and with our resources we can't sustain a jump in population, at least not in the near future."

Young shook himself out of his dreamy contemplation of her beautiful breasts and suggested recycling.

They looked at each other and then howled with laughter.

"I've had at least two dozen people tell me I smell good and trying to get me into the sack," Young admitted, wiping his eyes in rare mirth.

TJ looked at him with a startled expression. "Smell? Ah. That explains the increased sex drive."

Young's penny dropped as well.

"Purple sweet potatoes," he sighed in unison with her.

**oOo**

TJ expected a good number of women to ask her for pregnancy tests, but nobody ever did. She was still the only one on Destiny to carry a child, and it was conceived before the frantic flight from Icarus Base. Chatting about it with Lisa she learned that the women on board were all careful about when and how to have sex. "But even so," Lisa whispered, "I should have been pregnant months ago. I hate doing this temperature thing. And I have a good thing going with Dale and Ron, but for some reason they can't knock me up. Thank goodness."

Checking with Vanessa, Chloe, Drs Inman and Fisher, Corporal Barnes and others TJ heard similar stories over and over. So she finally took samples of herself, Adam Brody, Dr. Morrison and perennial volunteer Lisa, and with Dr. Inman's help she discovered a chemical in herself, Lisa and Adam that was similar to nonoxynol-9 and combined easily with organobromides.

So she posted a notice in the mess hall that people with active sex lives should eat all of their daily rations of purple sweet potatoes, because the sex was much better anyway, plus it had convenient perks.

Needless to say, Dr. Morrison, lone proprietor of purple sweet potatoes intolerant intestines, never saw any action except in his dreams.

**oOo**

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**A comment, review or feedback is very much appreciated! Thanks for reading!**


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